49th annual Distinguished Journalist Awards honorees announced
The Society of Professional Journalists, Greater Los Angeles Pro chapter, is pleased to honor six accomplished local journalists at its 49th annual Distinguished Journalist Awards Banquet to be held Oct. 22, 2025, at the Castaway restaurant in Burbank.
The honorees were nominated by journalists across Southern California and chosen by the SPJ/LA board in recognition of their outstanding contributions in the field.
Our honorees are: Joanne Griffith, chief content officer, Marketplace; Mark Acosta, metro editor, The Press-Enterprise and the Southern California News Group; Larry Maestas, managing editor, Southern California News Group; Lolita Lopez, investigative reporter, anchor, NBC4; Teresa Watanabe, reporter; Diana Martinez, editor, San Fernando Valley Sun.
The chapter's Freedom of Information award, given to a non-journalist who has helped further the free flow of information and championed freedom of the press, will go to John F. Szabo, City Librarian, Los Angeles Public Library.
The chapter will also recognize two students – one from a two-year college and one from a four-year university – who show promise as emerging journalists. This year’s outstanding students are Delilah Brumer, Pierce College, and Lex Wang, University of California, Los Angeles.
Tickets for the awards banquet will go on sale soon.
Meet the honorees:
Joanne Griffith is the chief content officer of American Public Media’s Marketplace, where she oversees the multichannel strategy across broadcast, on-demand and digital platforms. She joined Marketplace in 2025 after four years leading podcast strategy for APM Studios. In that time, Joanne developed the editorial framework that led to 31% of the audience identifying as Black or Hispanic, and 18- to 35-year-olds representing 47% of the audience - the future of public media. As an entrepreneurial leader, she is also the founder of En(title)d! a conversation and coaching space that supports leaders focused on building audiences that reflect the world. As a creative, Griffith has led teams at ESPN’s award-winning 30 for 30, LAist and the BBC, and she’s the creator of The Get Free Guide newsletter. A Brit, Griffith now calls Los Angeles home.
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Mark Acosta is a metro editor for The Press-Enterprise and the Southern California News Group in the Inland Empire. He started at The Press-Enterprise as a summer intern in 1990 and began working there full time in 1991.
As a reporter, he covered public safety and government across Riverside County and won several writing awards from the Society of Professional Journalists' Inland Empire chapter before moving into editing in 2002. Acosta worked as an editor across the Inland Empire, including time leading news bureaus in Hemet, Temecula, San Bernardino and working out of the main office in Riverside. In his current post, he helps oversee local news coverage and supervise reporters in the Inland Empire.
A Riverside native, Acosta earned a bachelor's degree in English from UC Riverside, along with a minor in journalism. He received a master's degree in journalism from Northwestern University's Medill School of Journalism. For many years, Acosta was president of the Inland Chapter of the California Chicano News Media Association, which awarded scholarships to Latino students and staged journalism workshops for high school and college students. He also served for several years on the CCNMA state board of directors. He serves on the Southern California News Group's Diversity Committee. In his spare time, Acosta, who lives in Riverside, enjoys Dodgers baseball and swimming.
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Larry Maestas, managing editor of the Southern California News Group design center, has been involved in journalism since writing his first high school newspaper article in 1976.
Professionally, he has been a general assignment reporter, sports writer, photographer, designer, copy editor, sports editor and news editor in Southern California publications ranging from the High Desert to Los Angeles. From the Barstow High School newspaper The Aztec, to the University of La Verne Campus Times, the Desert Dispatch, Daily Press, L.A. Daily News and the Southern California News Group, Maestas has made print journalism the centerpiece of his career. After offers to venture into radio and television, Maestas decided he had a face and voice only print readers would love. He and his wife Linda are raising two smarter-than-their-father children in Hesperia.
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Lolita Lopez is an award-winning journalist, reporter and anchor for NBC4 News where she covers stories surrounding the most pressing issues affecting Southern California communities. She joined KNBC in 2011.
Lopez feels privileged to tell peoples’ stories and has shared her own challenges with viewers, including a series of reports detailing her treatment and recovery from breast cancer. She has won several Los Angeles area Emmy Awards for her live anchoring and investigative reports.
Prior to joining NBC4, Lopez had a decade-long tenure at WPIX-TV in New York as a general assignment reporter and, later, a main sports anchor and on field reporter for the NY Mets. She was stationed at Ground Zero for nearly two weeks while covering the World Trade Center tragedy. Earlier in her career, she reported for Court TV’s issue-oriented legal program, “Pros and Cons,” with Nancy Grace.
Born in Puerto Rico, Lopez moved to Houston at age 4 when her father became the women’s track coach at Rice University. A lifelong sports fan, Lopez is a 1998 graduate of Harvard University, where she was a two time captain of the women’s volleyball and also participated in track and field. She is mother to a senior at UC Berkeley.
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Teresa Watanabe is a longtime journalist with versatile experience covering breaking news, in-depth features and analysis across local, state, national and international beat areas. She worked at the Los Angeles Times for 35 years, covering education, immigration, ethnic communities, religion, and Pacific Rim business and served as Tokyo correspondent and bureau chief. She also covered Asia, national affairs, state government and Southern California for the San Jose Mercury News and wrote editorials for the Los Angeles Herald Examiner. Dedicated to uplifting marginalized voices and promoting diversity in newsrooms, Watanabe has served in several leadership roles for the Asian American Journalists Association - Los Angeles. A Seattle native, she studied at Waseda University in Tokyo and graduated from USC in journalism and in East Asian languages and culture.
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Diana Martinez is a veteran journalist, editor and news director who from the start has been a multimedia practitioner. Throughout her career, she has worked in all facets of media in broadcast and print for numerous public and commercial media outlets of every size.
From starting newsrooms and bureaus at public radio stations to directing a challenging 24-hour newsroom at KFWB CBS Newsradio as an editor, to successfully rebuilding an essential community newspaper, The San Fernando Valley Sun/el Sol, she is noted for having a tireless commitment for on-the-ground coverage of diverse communities, breaking stories and guiding journalists of all ages to do the same. She is a co-author of the best-selling book, “What It Is... What It Was!; The Black Film Explosion of the '70s in Words and Pictures” and “Covering LA's Majority”, produced for the LA County Human Relations Commission.
She is also the owner of LA Media Group.
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John F. Szabo is the City Librarian of the Los Angeles Public Library, which serves over four million people—the largest population of any public library in the United States. He oversees the Central Library and 72 branches. In 2015, the library received the nation’s highest honor for library service, the National Medal for Museum and Library Service, for its success in meeting the needs of Angelenos and providing a level of social, educational and cultural services unmatched by any other public institution in the city.
Under his leadership, the library’s major initiatives include those related to immigrant integration and citizenship, sustainability, civic engagement, digital inclusion and lifelong learning. He has expanded the library’s reach into the city’s diverse communities through partnerships with several community-based organizations. He has more than 30 years of leadership experience in public libraries. Throughout his career, Szabo has championed innovative library services that address critical community needs in areas including health disparities, workforce development, adult literacy, school readiness and emergent literacy for preschoolers.
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Delilah Brumer is a bilingual student journalist with a passion for using data to report on education, government and immigrant communities. She is a recent graduate of Pierce College, where she was the editor-in-chief of the student-run newspaper, the Roundup. A lifelong Angeleno, she found her love for journalism while she was a student at Daniel Pearl Magnet High School, where she eventually became editor-in-chief of the student-run newspaper. Brumer’s bylines have appeared in The New York Times, Los Angeles Times, Southern California News Group, Colorado Newsline, EdSource and CalMatters, among other publications. In the fall, she will begin her junior year of college as a transfer student at UCLA.
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Lex Wang graduated from the University of California, Los Angeles with degrees in history and political science. At UCLA's student newspaper, the Daily Bruin, Wang served as an editor in two sections of the newsroom and was a staff member in five others. She also served as the editor in chief of The Bruin in her final year, overseeing the paper's journalistic direction and policies. During this time, The Bruin took home 59 awards at ACP and CMA's Fall National College Media Convention and ACP's Spring National College Media Conference – including the Best College Media Group of the Year award and an Online Pacemaker. She was a two-time recipient of the Daily Bruin Alumni Network Scholarship and has received several honors for her reporting.